the bells were ringing out
by recycled-stars
Summary: 'Tis the season. The holidays are a relief after a long year at the 12th.


**Author's Notes:** Ugh I am such a _sucker_ for the holiday season. Written for the lovely missymeggins at livejournal, who requested enthusiastic Castle and eye-rolling Beckett at Christmas. Instead there's _this_ piece of fluff. Enjoy and happy holidays! All the best.

* * *

><p>She's lost track of the months this year more than once. She started in May and woke up in September. And now it's December, almost before she realises. The paper cups her coffee comes in remind her though, when he sets one down on her desk as per their morning routine. Red, covered in stars and season's greetings: <em>when we're together I know I'll never fall<em>. A lie if Kate Beckett ever did read one. The truth is she's not sure when she'll _stop _falling, with him.

She runs her thumb over the rim of the plastic lid, hums her thanks, stares.

When she takes the first sip it's spicy, sweet, a holiday blend instead of her usual vanilla. Raising her eyebrow at him, she asks the question, silent.

"I was feeling _festive_," he says, defensively.

"That time already. Huh."

"Did it sneak up on you this year?"

"A lot of things did," she murmurs, hiding the weight of the words with a sip of coffee.

He nods, knows the feeling, because the way he loves her has been licking at his heels for months now, surprising him at the strangest moments. Like now, when she sets her cup down square on the desk and shifts in the chair to face the computer screen and her mouth falls open a little as she concentrates. It's the smallest things.

"So," he says, knowing it'll annoy her a little and needing their familiar dynamic instead of the hint of a new one he keeps glimpsing lately. It's taking all that's in him not to push for a change. "Who drew the short straw?"

(Because he wonders if she'll be working on Christmas Day, wonders what she'll be _doing_in that way he has of trying to imagine every little detail of her.)

"Not us," she says. "That means we're on New Year's though."

He's joking when he says it, a hint of the Castle who pulled oh-so-mercilessly at her pigtails and still pretended he was following her for research. "Oh well, I promise if a body drops I'll let you kiss me at midnight. Contingency plan."

She frowns behind her coffee cup, an inexplicable furrow of brows and he wonders, desperately, what she's thinking.

In her mouth she bites into her gingerbread tongue. That's not what she wants, for him, for _them_. So she smiles, genuine and a little sly. "And if a body doesn't drop?"

He chokes a little on his coffee.

"Can I still collect?" She presses her lips together to hide her amusement.

"Sure," he says. "If you don't have a better offer."

"Hmm," she hums, busies herself with work and refuses to look at him. "I doubt it."

* * *

><p>On the sixteenth, they close a long and difficult case. The paperwork looms, but Castle leans down to hold the manila folder closed when she reaches for it.<p>

She frowns, swats at his hand. "You're in the way."

"That's the point," he informs her, sweet. "Come on, it's Friday night."

"And?"

"_Kate_. It's Friday, two weeks before Christmas. This'll wait until Monday. Or tomorrow at least."

She gives him a very long, very appraising look.

Across the room, she hears Esposito's chair roll forward, its occupant all ears. "Castle's right," he offers his opinion unasked. "It'll wait."

And then there are _three _pleading faces looking down at her and call it holiday cheer but she can't find it in her to deny any of them. Rolling her eyes, she reaches over and shuts off the computer monitor. "So. What did you have in mind?"

"Old Haunt," Ryan says and Esposito finishes the sentence, jabbing a thumb in Castle's direction, "He's buying."

Her gaze flicks across both of them but then settles on her partner, his scarf still knotted at his throat. He nods. "Ryan already texted Jenny and I already invited Lanie. You can't say no."

"_No_," she teases.

"Wait, you invited _Lanie_?" Esposito bristles beside him.

"Impromptu Christmas party," Castle defends himself sportingly. Covering his mouth with his hand he stage whispers to her, as though this is a secret they share, "If _nothing else_, I know you want to see how that plays."

Esposito scowls.

He and Ryan move to get their coats and Beckett stands, finds Castle holding out hers by the neck. She slips her arms into each sleeve and pulls her hair out from under the collar, turning to him, unable to keep her face from smiling, eyebrow quirked. She's the picture of wry amusement she's always been, at this childish side of him.

"You really think they're going to work it out just because it's the holidays don't you?"

(And just like the last time they talked about Lanie and Esposito, she wonders if really, they're talking about _them_, when he looks at her.)

"'Tis the season for forgiving." He offers her his arm and she takes it, twisting a lock of hair between her fingers. "Well, that and I plan on plying them with liquor. Ought to do the trick."

"Exactly how much mistletoe is hanging above the bar at the Old Haunt Castle?"

He wriggles his eyebrows at her. "Enough, I hope."

She mutes her laugh by pressing her lips together and shakes her head.

* * *

><p>He catches her ordering her own drink at the bar, and moving to pay for it too. He plucks her card from her hands before she can hand it over and shakes his head at the bartender, who immediately moves on to serving their next customer. It's busy, the weekend and the holidays crowding the place.<p>

When she looks over her shoulder to communicate her distaste though, he stills her by the elbows and glances up.

That has her rolling her eyes even _more_.

"Told you there was enough," he says, next to her ear.

Everything in her tenses, anticipation and apprehension and _want_. He hears her lungs startle, feels her turning to look at him but before she can he kisses her cheek.

"There," he says, reaching out to pluck her drink from the bar top. "Nothing to worry about."

When they safely extricate themselves from the throng of patrons waiting for drinks, she curls her arm around his sleeve and holds him in place for a private moment before they rejoin their friends.

"I wasn't worried," she tells him softly.

He nods, stunned to muteness or just not trusting himself to speak, and she plucks the glass from his fingers before she wanders back to her seat beside Lanie, immediately immersed in conversation.

He lingers though, thinking over her admission, caught somewhere between the echo of her cheek against his lips and the scene in front of him, the way coloured lights frame the booth where they sit, Jenny tucked beneath Ryan's arm, Lanie opposite Esposito, tension absolved by alcohol, and next to Lanie, _Kate_.

He can't see her face, just her curls, spilling out onto the purple plaid of her shirt. It's one of her favourites, soft to touch which he knows because he likes to finger the corners of her sleeves lately, where they fold around her elbows. She laughs at something Lanie says, a sound that cuts through all the noise and there's nothing for expressing the depth of the feeling, that he's just so _grateful _she's here, laughing, alive.

His spot, empty leather, is there, opposite her, waiting.

It's coming up on four years, and still, he almost can't believe his luck, that they occupy these spaces, that somehow he has found these friends, these people. Castle has a habit of romanticising at times - he's a writer, it goes with the territory - but even he won't deny that the year has been painful. There's a man missing at their table, their leader and their friend, and that still haunts a part of all of them. And there have been other, less tangible losses. But December is a relief if not a reprieve, a reminder of everything they still have, that life itself is the greatest gift.

And despite its pitfalls, he's grateful for another year passed and yet another looming. Since May, he's been grateful for every _day_, even the hardest ones in the summer. She has physical scars and they both have these barely-healed invisible ones, a bruised, damaged love that is finally on the mend. But despite all of it, he knows he's happier now than before her, knows there will be no _after_, that these four years with these four people have been exactly what he didn't know he needed before them. What she's given him is lasting.

Beckett is staring straight ahead at where he should be, and it reminds him, stirs him from introspection.

When he sits opposite her, her eyes dart up, meet his, and she smiles.

It warms him far more than the rum.

* * *

><p>Ryan surprises them all (or at least causes them to <em>feign <em>surprise for his benefit) when he invites them to the charity concert his community choir is holding on Christmas Eve. And so after the precinct begins winding down for the holidays, they traipse across town to St Patrick's in the dark. All of their number are not yet present though. Castle edges into the pew first and stops before the end, leaves space for Beckett, who insisted on staying late to finish up the last of their paperwork before the holiday.

They chat easily as they wait, discussing the weather bureau's promise of a white Christmas and the dark looming clouds outside. The church fills around them.

Ryan appears for a brief hello to retrieve his Santa hat from Jenny before darting backstage.

Lanie absently remarks that the last time she was in a Catholic church she was wearing a school uniform. Half an innuendo from Esposito is silenced by a glare, but then they each start sharing stories of Christmas masses past.

Castle has one singular memory of attending church as a child, with his disapproving maternal grandmother. After taking his crayons to the King James Bible resting on the pew in front of him, he was never taken again. He relays the tale with flair, drawing laughter all round.

Activity at the front of the room ushers in a silence and the lights dim slightly. He cranes his neck, looking for Beckett and as if in answer to a silent call, his cell buzzes in his pocket.

"Are you here?" he asks her. "They're about to start."

"I'm nearly there Castle," she says, breathless from the cold. He can hear her heels over the line, slapping against cement as she hurries up the stairs and he sits up higher, envisioning her appearing in the doorway, ready to wave her over, but there are too many people blocking the way.

"Where are you?" Her question interrupts his imagination. Eyes still searching he begins to answer but he hears her voice getting closer until she exclaims, "Oh, wait, don't worry, I can see you."

She pauses when his gaze finally settles on hers, answering his wave with a small curl of her fingers. Remembering herself, she hastens to slip into the seat beside him as he murmurs greetings. She echoes his sentiments, just as softly. They're hardly saying words.

"Hi Kate," Jenny whispers, from the seat beside Castle. "You didn't miss anything. They're late to start as usual."

"Oh good. I'm so sorry, I got a bit caught up."

From down the row, Lanie leans across Esposito to wave. Beckett smiles her greeting as the lights dim completely. Almost in unison, both her and Castle reach for their phones, hands brushing as they draw them out of respective pockets.

(It's not an original thought; all around them people move to do the same and for a moment, the church is lit by the blue-white glow of LED screens, the fireflies of the information age.)

She's grinning a little. He sees it in the light catching her chin until she thumbs her cell phone off.

When the lights come up again, revealing the choir paused and ready on the rises, Castle's hand is resting on his knee, fisted around the program. She lets her hand start towards his and he moves to hand the paper to her, but she shakes her head, takes it from him with her other hand. During the opening bars of _Fairytale Of New York _she laces their fingers together.

Her attention then rests steadily on the stage and on Ryan, fourth from the right in the second row, swaying happily in time with the music. She smiles though, because she can feel Castle's eyes on her, notices the way he keeps glancing down at their hands in her peripheral vision.

He squeezes her fingers and she squeezes back.

_Yes_, says the gentle pressure, an answer to all his questions. _It is. We are. I do_.

* * *

><p>Everyone has somewhere to be immediately after the show. Ryan and Jenny are leaving straight from the church for the airport, hoping the snowstorm holds off long enough for their flight to leave. Lanie and Esposito both mumble separate excuses, but leave together and Beckett is nearly laughing at how obvious they are until she realises that they're alone on the steps. It sobers her, softens her grin into a different kind of smile.<p>

Castle reaches out and takes her gloved hand. "I'll walk you home," he says.

Her heart crescendoes in her chest, swelling and filling all of her with blood. She nods, suddenly and inexplicably a little shy. Maybe it's the stupid _magic _of the moment, the kind she's never really believed in, the softly falling snow and the jingle of bells, Christmas carols somewhere in the distance and the promise of the morning to come. So far they have come in a year, and still, so much further that she wants to go. She clutches his fingers.

"Sure," she says, starts forward before him, tugging him with her.

It's only a few blocks to her apartment and they don't fill it with conversation. The air is too full of something else anyway, joy, the collective notion that this season is special, of _grace_ and _peace _and coming change. She feels it gathering momentum between them but it doesn't scare her. Where all her fear used to be she finds wonder instead.

By the time they make it to the door of her building, it's snowing in flurries. The delicate white catches on her lashes and he thinks that's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

She's rummaging for her keys when he drops her hand, burries both of his in the pockets of his coat.

When she looks up, he's surprised at her surprise.

"You probably have to get home," she says, remembering his family and the traditions they probably share in a rush.

"Eventually."

He doesn't move to leave though and they both begin in unison:

"I could -"

"You could -"

She's holding in her laughter, lips pressed together, eyes dancing upward, amused at their synchronicity. He grins with her.

When the moment passes though, they both make to finish the sentence in exactly the same way they started it, together. "Come up."

"Sure," he nods. "If you'd like."

She's finally managed to get the door open, gloved hands clumsy with her keys. "Yeah," she says softly, pushing it open, holding it for him. "I would."

* * *

><p>Her apartment is warm, a soothing relief from the winter outside. The snow melts into his coat and gloves, leaving them wet before he even has a chance to take them off. After she disappears to change, she picks them up from where he's laid them over her dining chairs and hangs them in front of the heater in the living room.<p>

He's already at home on her couch, flicking through the channels, deciding between _Holiday Inn_ and _Batman Returns_. Black and white wins the day, but she can tell he'll be flipping back during the commercial breaks.

As she rounds the sofa, her hand glances his shoulder in an unfamiliar gesture; they're not usually the kind for casual touches, but tonight she finds she can't help herself.

He looks up at her, turns off the television. "Better?" he asks.

"Much," she says. "Covered in far less snow."

"Me too."

"Good." She sinks onto the opposite end of the sofa, hugs the armrest and tucks her legs beneath her. "It's going to be hell out there in a few hours."

_But stay anyway_. He hears it even though she doesn't say it, gives a kind of reply. "That's okay."

The silence is comfortable, for a time. She closes her eyes, enjoys the warmth, his hushed but tangible presence, the pleasant end to another busy week and the promise of two or three days off.

"You know," he begins, disturbing her quiet, but she doesn't begrudge him for it. "I never would have thought you'd have a tree," he muses, nodding towards the corner of the room where the pine, on the smaller side, casts coloured light on the white walls. Her Christmas decorations, traditional red and gold, catch and reflect the glow. "Doesn't seem like you."

She shrugs. "I love the smell."

"It reminds you of your childhood." He reads her expression, sees the way her hand settles over the ring beneath her shirt. "Your mother."

She nods. "Good memories though."

"Yeah?"

"She always... made it special. I remember my grandparents would always come to the city for the night and we'd go to midnight mass in Brooklyn." She laughs, "We never went to church, except for that night, but she made me promise _never_to tell my grandmother. I always liked it though, the frankincense and the candles. I mean, I never really believed it was anything more than a tradition, but ... I went with my grandparents every year for a while after she died."

"Traditions can be comforting."

"Yeah." She catches herself being too serious but can't stop herself from glancing over at him, all too significant, because here they are, making all their own traditions. "They are."

"We could still make it Brooklyn before midnight," he says.

It's this generous way that he loves her that is always her undoing, that his life and his world can so easily open and create a place for her, the way he'll bend to accommodate her past, all the things she carries with her, it gives her so much _hope_for the future. It pricks at her eyes. She looks away, stares at the coloured lights of the tree.

"No," she says, when she trusts herself to speak. "Not a chance that I'm leaving the house in this weather."

"You think Ryan and Jenny got out okay?" he muses.

"I hope so," she answers. "Nothing worse than being stuck in an airport on Christmas Eve."

"Do you speak from experience?"

"The Christmas before my mom died," she hesitates, clearly caught on harder memories. "I spent the first half of winter break visiting my first college boyfriend."

He interrupts, "Love of your life?"

She rolls her eyes. "Aren't they always, at the time? I made the last flight out before O'Hare closed. We were delayed six hours."

"But you made it, in the end."

"I did." She smiles and he thinks that part of the memory, at least, must be good. "What about you?" she asks, realising as she has fleetingly in the past, that they spend so much time talking about her, her family, her past, that she knows only select details of his. A curiosity awakened, she presses. "Any Castle family traditions I should know about?"

"If you want stories from my childhood, it was the Rogers family then. And ... my mother loves the holidays, the same way she loves any excuse to celebrate. There was always some party or another, but there were hardly _traditions_." His look is fond; she doesn't think he begrudges Martha for it. "Well, except crawling into her bed to watch _It's A Wonderful Life _on Christmas Eve. We did do that year after year until I got old enough to hate Jimmy Stewart."

"Really?" Her eyebrows arch.

"Too wooden."

"Mmm. I prefer Cary Grant myself."

"Or Bogie."

"_We're No Angels _might have been a better choice then."

"I still wouldn't have the heart to tell her."

"What about now? The _Castle_traditions? You would've wanted them, for Alexis."

He smiles at how well she knows him. "There are too many. The most important one when Alexis was younger was that we opened one present at midnight on Christmas Eve." He wriggles his brow at her. "Speaking of, do you want something to go beneath that tree?"

"Castle."

"Yes, I bought you something." He stands, crosses the room to his coat and begins rummaging in the pockets. "And before you scold-" he brandishes a small, innocuous looking package "- it's nothing over the top, just a gift Kate. And it doesn't matter if you didn't get anything for me."

She frowns at the red package suspiciously, but takes it from him, sets it down on the armrest beside her. "I did get you something," she says, standing. "In a manner of speaking. Hang on."

When she returns, the wrapped gift she's holding is distinctly more rectangular than his, bigger, _book_ shaped. He's immediately intrigued, theories forming like they do at crime scenes; _what kind of literature would she pick for him?_

She sits, clutches it in her hands like she's wondering whether she should actually part with it. It heightens his curiosity but he doesn't push. After a moment, she hands it over offering a disclaimer as she does. "It's not much."

"Doesn't matter," he says. "Go on. Open yours."

Obliging, she is a study in concentration as she turns it over in her hands, deciding on a plan of attack.

"Did you have to use so much tape?" she asks, perplexed, fingernails failing to lift it at the edges.

"Should've known you'd be the type to try to preserve the paper," he teases, gleefully tearing into her gift. "No, I _did _know. So I used enough tape that you'd be _forced _to rip it open like a child."

"Rip it open?" she raises an eyebrow. "With this much tape I'll have to perform a surgical extraction."

"Do you need me to assist?"

"No." She pulls her palms away from each other, clutching at the paper, with all her strength and it tears open, depositing a smaller box into her lap. "Is this a pass the parcel?"

He doesn't answer immediately and she realises he's staring at the books that have fallen beside him, her meticulous wrapping job crunched beyond recognition beneath his hands.

"Uh Beckett? Did you give me first editions of two of my _own _books?"

She's always saved him a unique combination of affection and exasperation. She regards him with it, her lips twisted towards one corner of her mouth, her eyes following. Then her gaze shifts back; she meets his eyes. "_Yes_. But it's not what you think. Open them."

He opens the copy of _Heat Rises _he signed for her in September first, sees her name and his signature scrawled in anger. There's nothing personal about the message. He wrote it a hundred times at least that day alone. Staring at it now, he regrets that. In spite of everything, her faults and his, she deserved more.

Swallowing, he glances at her.

"Not our finest moment," she murmurs.

"No," he agrees.

"I'm sorry for that." She looks like she might say more, but shakes it off, pushes her hair behind her ears. "Look at the other one," she urges, quietly.

It's a much older book. _A Skull At Springtime_. Long before Derrick Storm, but then, he already knew she'd read the earlier work. (And he was somewhere between pleased and embarrassed by that.) He flips open the cover and there it is again, his signature, her name, and on the opposite page, the publication date. 2003. He can't stop staring at it. "You had it signed."

She nods. "I waited in line for hours. It was my first year on homicide and I hadn't had a day off in longer than I can remember. It took all day."

He's listening, she can read how closely, but the answer is seemingly incongruous. "We'd already met, the night of the Storm Fall party."

"Yes."

"Where?"

"The Barnes and Noble at Union Square."

"I wish I could remember," he says and she doesn't doubt it.

"I'd hardly expect you to. There was nothing special about me."

The glance he gives her says that he disagrees, but he's just being literary, re-writing history. There wasn't anything extraordinary about that first meeting for him, even if she cherished the memory for weeks afterward.

"Did we talk at all?" he wonders.

"You asked me who you should sign it to. And I said Kate."

_You can make it out to Kate._

Realisation doesn't strike him, it simply slips into place, clarity. _This _is the gift. The first book signing, that was their beginning, even though years later he doesn't remember it and at the time, she couldn't have known. But the second, the image reflected years later in the mirror of time, that was her offering him the beginning of something else. For a muse, she reduces him to speechlessness far more often than is probably desirable.

"I wanted a new start," she speaks softly, when he doesn't. "I... I'd done so many things that I would have done differently." _If I had known_. It's the unspoken end of her thought and she chews at her lip, wonders if he hears it, how many of her cards she has unwittingly played.

But even the unspoken isn't a whole truth. The words in the cemetery were already familiar, something they'd been telling each other silently for months. She has her humanity though - regrets and fallibility - and when she was so weak and in a world so alien to her, so irrevocably altered, she had clung to the familiar, to subtext instead of text. And even now, she knows she doesn't share his gift for language, that there's no way of adequately conveying what she feels, that _love_will have to do. But it's pedestrian, and so she hopes she's saying it other ways, without saying it at all.

"So it was meant to be our do-over," she finishes, fingers skirting the edge of the sofa cushion, nervous, wondering how he will receive the information, what she wants to give him.

"I never wanted that," he says, simple, hushed. Like so many other things between them, the question remains silent. He sees it though, answers. "All of this time with you, it's been... inspiring. Challenging, sometimes, but worth it, Kate."

To remove some of the burden on the moment, he makes light. "But thank you, for this. My gift's never going to be able to live up to it. You've outdone me, truly."

She scoffs. "Somehow I doubt that anyone has _ever_outdone you when it comes to giving gifts."

"I told you it wasn't over the top," he insists, defensive.

"And your idea of over the top is _worlds _away from ... mine," she quips, but fumbles towards the end of the sentence when she opens the box.

He's right, it's nothing over the top, just an ornament in the shape of a snowflake wrapped in tissue paper. Calling it _just _an ornament doesn't do it justice though; the light blue glass and brilliant white crystals seem to catch all the light in the room and reflect it.

"One of a kind," he says. "The artist has made hundreds of them and none of them are the same, like real snowflakes."

She lets it twist from its silver thread, dancing in her fingers. "It's ..."

"Unique," he supplies.

"Beautiful," she finishes her sentence as she intended.

"Reminded me of you."

She stands, pads across the carpet to the tree and pauses for a moment, considering. It takes a place near the top. She threads it delicately onto a delicate branch of the fir and lets her hand linger beneath it, until she's sure it'll stay then steps back to admire her handiwork.

"I wanted to buy you the whole set." He stands, comes up beside her elbow, looks at the tree over her shoulder, just like they examine all the murder boards. "But _that_might've been over the top."

She smiles even though he can't see it. "This one is perfect. Thank you Castle."

After that there's a silence which she thinks about filling, not because she's compelled, but because she thinks there are so many things she could tell him, so many parts of herself she wants to share.

"Well," he says, "I can say it officially. Merry Christmas."

She glances at her father's watch. It's well and truly after midnight. "And you," she echoes. "You should go. I've already kept you too long."

But she wants to keep him, and when he smiles, she thinks he wants to be kept.

This, this quiet certainty, is new. It's product of the year, of its trial by fire, its damages and deaths and irrevocable hurts.

That's the thing, she thinks, about hard times. They force you to learn the truths about yourself you've been avoiding, teach you your own strength, how to adapt. And they change you or force you to change. This thing between the two of them, it has. She has.

Maybe she was taken apart, by the shooting and their harsh words and her mentor's death/betrayal, but she knows she's putting herself together, piece by piece, confronting cracks that have been there for ten years, making improvements. She's a better cop, better person now that she ever was before.

And she wants to be better still, for him, for them, but more than ever, for herself, something she hasn't wanted for far too long. That's the newest, best thing, the hope she has rediscovered.

"Never," he says, but she knows he means always and she draws a hand to her chest, lets it rest against the ring that has been a symbol of her grief for so long. Now she thinks it's just like the scar above her sternum, a mark of something she has survived.

For a fleeting second she thinks he's about to reach for her, but he steps aside, plucks his coat off the back of the armchair and rescues a glove from where it has fallen into the cushions.

They are slow in their journey toward the door. Her novels are tucked under his arm.

"I don't have to keep them you know," he tells her.

"They're a gift Castle. You are meant to keep them. In fact I think it's rude not to."

"I'll send you new ones then."

"I have two copies anyway. You already replaced most of them," she says. "After the Dunn case, you replaced almost everything from the bookshelves. How did you remember? Because it wasn't just your books."

"I pay attention," he answers, proud.

"So keep them," she insists. "If you have to, consider them on loan."

(One day their books will line the same shelves. The point is moot.)

"What are your plans," he asks, abandoning the subject. "For tomorrow, or for later today?"

"Dad has a sister in White Plains. We're going up tomorrow afternoon, at least, unless this weather sticks."

She doesn't add that it's the first year she's visited her extended family in a long time.

It's become a habit to work over the holidays, taking shifts for people who want to spend the day with their families. Usually, if there isn't a fresh body, she stops by her father's in the afternoon and they sit in front of the television. It's always an understated affair. But not this year.

"I imagine you and Alexis have big plans." Her hand is resting on the doorknob but she doesn't open it. "And that your mother will be cooking far too much food for three people."

"It's likely," he says, dryly. "So if the weather is prohibitive, you're more than welcome, your father too. In fact, it'd save us from eating leftovers until February."

"Well, as long as it's a favour," she ribs, genially. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Call me," he says and there is a pause that is a moment too long. Then he adds, "If we get a body. I know you're not back until Wednesday."

She nods. "I always do."

He'll probably show up anyway. Since the bank heist, he's started flirting with paperwork. His attention span is short, but he's happy to watch her, bring her coffee. And she's happy to have him there, mostly.

When she pulls open the door and he's standing on the other side of it, they linger, swallowing down words.

"Night," he says and she parrots and still, there's a second more before she closes the door behind him.

She crosses to the window when she does, beside the closed shutters hiding her mother's murder board which has hung, abandoned, for months. The glass is freezing beneath her hands and she watches until he looks up, sees her shadow in the window or doesn't, chances it, waves just in case she's watching.

She hugs her elbows, imagines she can see his smile, a mirror of her own.

* * *

><p>The call came at eleven. She's lost track of how much time has passed since, immersed in working the crime scene. There are at least twenty people who were in the apartment at the time of death to take statements from; Ryan and Esposito are in the hall, making slow progress. Lanie is waiting on her staff to take the body back to the morgue. Traffic, as expected, is against them and she's starting to fret about preserving evidence. It's an unorthodox way to celebrate the end of a long year, but this is what they <em>do <em>and none of them would really want it any other way.

(Well. They all wish they didn't have to do the job at all. But someone has to, and they're all a little bit glad that it's them and that they do it together.)

Castle tugs at her sleeve though, leads her away from the murder, the bloodstain on the carpet and the outline of the body and all the finer details that's she's filing away for later. It's cold outside on the balcony. She pulls off the blue nitrile gloves and tucks them under the sleeve of her coat, rubbing her hands together. "What is it Castle?" she asks, impatient.

He smiles at her annoyance, takes her by the elbow, tugs her to the railing where the lights of the city and beyond it, Brooklyn, stretch out before them. Her wrist turns beneath his fingers, showing her the face of her father's watch.

"Nearly midnight Beckett," he whispers, closer to her ear than she realised, breath ghosting between his mouth and her skin in the freezing cold.

_Oh_. She knew he'd remember their earlier conversation – he never seems to forget anything she says – but she'd been distracted by their case. She swallows her breath, feels it laze through her, setting all of her on edge, warmth and anticipation.

In the apartments around them, drunk laughter gives way to slightly out-of-sync countdowns. She turns, leans her shoulder into his chest. "I think it's going to be a good year Castle," she says, lashes impossibly long, eyes impossibly dark.

He nods, mute, throat thick.

"I'm so glad this one's done," she adds, voice almost a plea, eyes glittering but maybe that's just the cold.

Her fingers wrap around his, like ice already. In the wind that hasn't let up, her hair is whipping at her cheeks, into her mouth. There's the hint of more snow in it and a few flakes start to dance around them. Squeezing, he tucks her hands into her pockets and releases them, reaches out to palm her hair behind her ears and lets his own hands rest, cradling her face. Ten becomes one faster than they are going. This is a suspended moment, slow, an eternity in a few short seconds.

Across the water, Brooklyn beats Manhattan to bursts of colour in the sky.

She sees them traverse his face, the lines of his forehead and the familiar crease of his mouth and the plane of his cheeks and the shine of his eyes. And then she doesn't see them, because her eyes are closed and his lips are pressing against hers, soft but insistent.

It's delicate like a seedling, pressing up against all odds through raw earth, the start of something.

And then it's warm like the coffee he's been bringing her for years. He tastes like it, the earlier cup he brought to the call out lingering on his tongue.

She bites into her lip in a kind of awe when she settles back onto her heels and he pulls back, presses a thumb into the corner of her mouth and _smiles_at her, everything in him right there on his face.

"We should get back," he says into her answering grin.

She nods but doesn't move, shifts her weight on her feet as the pop and crackle of fireworks continues over their heads and someone, somewhere switches their bass-heavy dance tracks for _Auld Lang Syne_. "We should."

Her mouth opens to say more, chest and tongue heavy with a weight, a gift that she wants to give, but something stops her. It's not the kind of moment she wants to burden. Instead she pulls one hand from her pocket, warmed by the wool of her coat, and takes his fingers, grasps his hand. "I'm glad you're here," she says, her heart beating like it couldn't for those precious seconds in May with _it's you, it's you, it's you_.

He nods. "Come on Beckett, locked room mystery at a masquerade-themed New Year's Eve party? You know I'd never miss that."

Her eyes say that she hears the silent clause, _I'd never miss you_, but the rest of her slips towards professional again. "So," she says, face all fondness even as her tone teases. Her gloves snap back onto her fingers. "Do you have a theory to explain all this?"

His own fingers wiggle into his own gloves and he frowns as he has to adjust them. "Since it can't be the butler, it's got to be the femme fatale." He waggles his eyebrows at her and continues the tale, spinning it fantastic as he pulls open the sliding glass door for her, letting a draught of warm air reach out and hug them, tug them onwards.

And she's right; it is the start of a very good year.

_Fin._


End file.
